Freezing cold, stricken with smallpox and under attack from enemy ships in a foreign land, a regiment of American soldiers fled their encampment in Deschambault, Canada, early on the morning of May 7, 1776.

Motorists (or boaters) heading north into Hartford see his signature blue onion dome just in front of the spacious park he and his wife, Elizabeth, left to the city. He's been gone since the mid-19th century, yet the name Samuel Colt is still known around...

From Samuel Colt and his revolver to Alfred Fuller and his brushes and Vernon Krieble and Loctite, Hartford has been a breeding ground for innovative business success. There's every reason to believe the same sort of problem-solving, leadership and...

Playwright Anton Chekhov famously said that a gun should never be displayed onstage without a reason. If it is seen in the first act, he advised, it ought to go off by the third.
In other words, writers should not clutter a narrative with distractions...

The merchant of death is dead: Mikhail Kalashnikov passed Monday at 94 in a hospital in Izhevsk, the capital of the Russian republic of Udmurtia.
Of course you know his name; everyone knows his name. It’s as famous a name as Samuel Colt, maker...

Thetwo halves of the gun-making company Samuel Colt established in Hartford in the 1850s are coming back together, with plans that include keeping a combined 750 employees in West Hartford, a company executive said Monday.
Colt Defense LLC's $60.5 million acquisition of Colt Manufacturing Co. will reunite Colt's military and civilian handgun businesses, a decade after they were split apart. The merger is intended to usher in a new era of growth for the company, said Gerry Dinkel, chief executive of Colt...

In its early days, many would have doubted that the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art would still be around in 2014. Old Lyme artist Henry White (1861-1952) painted a sorrowful picture of the museum he visited as a boy: "The picture gallery was a sepulchral chamber. The dim light filtered down from an opening in the lofty ceiling as into a well. The place had a musty odor. One spoke in whispers, for one's voice echoed with a grim and startling effect."
It opened in July 1844, but just a short time later,...

It doesn't take long to see the effects of massive investment at the Connecticut factories that make the AR-15 military-style rifle.
Deep in the heart of the sprawling Colt firearms plant in West Hartford, Bobby Craddock sets up rifle barrels in an enclosed, computerized lathe the size of a small car.
Wearing green rubber gloves, the Colt employee will start the lathe, then oversee a nearby machine. The second machine will inspect the rifle barrel itself, immediately after the cutting process is...

Past the heavy glass doors of the world's most famous jewelry store, two glimmering rings sit waiting to be selected for the proper marriage. One is a diamond-inlaid platinum band selling for $11,700, the other a matching engagement ring priced at $37,900.
Though it's not required, a bride and groom might find it easier to afford such luxury if they come from the "right" families. Such was the case with the man who, with a partner, started the world's most famous jewelry store.
Charles L. Tiffany...

By the late 1850s, Samuel Colt had already become a millionaire by selling his famous revolvers to armies around the world. He had just opened his Coltsville Armory in Hartford's South Meadows, where his workers churned out 150 guns a day using the latest manufacturing techniques.
While some of his contemporaries in business suffered from the moral ambiguities of a national commerce rooted in slavery, Sam Colt seemed to feel no such qualms.
"Colt regarded slavery not as a moral wrong but as an...

In a field behind Deep River's historical society stands a small glass building shaped like a triangle. It looks like a greenhouse, but there is a U.S. patent for it filed by a local man named Ulysses Pratt. This "bleach house," as it was called, was designed not to grow plants but to expose to sunlight, for a period of 30 sunny days, ivory piano keys cut from the tusks of African elephants.
In Deep River and neighboring Ivoryton, a section of Essex, dozens of these bleach houses, some as long as a...